Welcome to Highway to Hale

I used to write here. I haven’t done that in awhile. Instead, I spend my time commenting on other blogs, building conversations on Facebook & Twitter, keeping clients happy, and consuming content in an effort to get smarter.

Where Am I Now?

I’m shoulder deep in the evolving world of business communications as shaped by consumers & creators of digital media. Continuing to seize opportunity at the leading edge of digital communications. I’m freelancing as a digital marketer, branding specialist, and even as a production artist every so often.

I’ve also been doing some fun things you may have missed…

u30pro Twitter Chat & Community

Red Bull Flugtag 2010: The Perfect Getaway

ChevySXSW Roadtrip 2011: Buffett’s Bros

I keep pretty active on a few other sites you might want to check out…

Twitter | LinkedIn | Tumblr | Facebook

Image Via Flickr's "Woody1778a"

As most of you know, new FTC guidelines concerning bloggers and disclosure went into effect yesterday. Will the new FTC guidelines cause blogger relations and online PR to look more like advertising than traditional PR? I don’t think so.

Before the new guidelines dropped, there was a big push for blogger transparency. If Chris Brogan wrote about a client, he let the readers know. If David Spinks wrote about an online tool that had an associated cost waived, he mentioned it so readers were aware.

Why hasn’t anybody accused the larger blogs of advertising in the past? Because whether they were given free products/services or not, the writing feels true and the readers trust them.

Blogging has received a lot of spotlight recently and readers are choosing to read the blogs they trust. With the blogs I read, it doesn’t matter whether the writer was given an item for free or not – I trust that they will give an honest opinion.

I understand that a blogger is less likely to complain about something they have been given for free, but you had better believe the blogger will either choose not to write about it, or they will write a half-hearted review filled with simple facts and a claim that the product or service might be great for some other kind of person.

My final take: The new FTC guidelines won’t impact things too heavily. Good writers will continue to be believable and trustworthy. Readers will be more aware of the perks of being a trusted public figure, but that doesn’t mean they will stop listening and acting on trusted recommendations.

This post is a result of my asking you to name my next blog post. I only had a few suggestions and I appreciate each one, but this title comes as a suggestion from Jonathan Miller (@JonFun). Thank you all.

We’ve all had those moments where ideas and words just dry up in an instant. Contributing factors combine to act as a sponge for creativity and our fingers cease up. None of our ideas seem to be that important and none of the words we use to express our ideas are quite right. So we stop. That’s ok – if you don’t have anything to write/say, take some time to gather your thoughts.

First, don’t worry about it. It happens to everybody. That’s often where the strange posts on your favorite blogs come from. Sometimes the strange idea becomes a regular feature, sometimes it goes into the “filler” bin.

Don’t be afraid to let your ideas build up in a mental reservoir without writing anything. Chances are the build up won’t take long before the dam breaks and your ideas are begging to get out into the world. When that dam breaks, grab a laptop, some headphones and some coffee (if that’s what you’re in to). Sit down and blast out as many posts as your carpal tunnel will allow. Once you’ve got a cache of solid content – refine and relate to timely examples when you are ready to publish.

Don’t look for ideas while you write, let the ideas find you. If you’ve done your searching and thinking before you write, you’ll have a harder time stopping than getting started.

If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right.

You name it, I will write it.

If you want to read the opposite side of a popular argument – I’m game.

If you want to see me link something ridiculous to a marketing, social media, or PR lesson – let’s do it.

If there’s a question you don’t think is getting answered sufficiently – I’ll research it and throw down some answers from my perspective.

It’s really up to you to determine the direction of my next blog post.

Have fun with it and maybe we’ll all learn a little something.

Leave a comment here or hit me up on Twitter @sjhalestorm

Image Credit; Wools

You might have noticed I didn’t post any new content last week…not even a #followfriday. The reason? The Social Situation blog is going under a bit of construction.

I am not positive when I will return to posting here, but I know it will be soon and there will be a new look and feel when I do.

During the hiatus, I will be writing new content that will exceed the expectations you have built about this site and designing a new style to reflect the changes you will see happening in my life.

As a bit of a teaser, the changes include not being unemployed any longer.

In the meantime, go ahead and connect with me on Twitter. I’ve also been updating my Tumblr page quite a bit and you can find consistently updated (but less extensive) content there.

As always, I’d love to connect on LinkedIn – and you might even catch some interesting tidbits there about my future.

Finally, I still advocate that you start following each of the people in this section of Social Situation. They are all very helpful in their own way.

Thank you for your continued support, and I will talk to you all very soon.

- Scott

There has been quite a bit going on in the SM world lately (a few Facebook changes, Twitter’s horrible retention rate, a realization that some professors simply don’t understand SM, possible errors with Twitter’s retention rate data…etc.), but things are crazy around here, so I offer you some updates about some things happening in the life of Scott Hale.

First, I’ve been fortunate to jump on a project with my friends over at Deep Bench called Mrs. Dude’s Boob Fund. I’ll let the link do the talking, but its a great true-life story of sacrifice, love, mothers, and breast cancer. While the story is heartwarming, the goal is to raise a bunch of money for breast cancer research so nobody lives the story over again. A donation makes a great Mother’s Day gift and some really great people over at Enthusem will send your mother a card for her special day letting her know that you have made a donation in her name. To make things better, a donation of $75 or more will also get your mother a sterling bracelet. So, if you have some money, please donate. If you have the time, tweet about the fund. If you tweet, @ reply to Ellen (@theellenshow) so the Boob Fund can make a television appearance and raise a healthy stash of cash in the attempt to eradicate breast cancer.

Enough promo for a fun project for a wonderful cause I’ve had the joy of working on with a couple other dudes that could not identify a boob if it walked up and smacked them in the face. On to promo for the sjhalestorm family of networks. I created a Flickr account yesterday. Of course, the account name is sjhalestorm and you can find the account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/scotthale. Why did I wait so long to join one of the hottest SM sites on the interwebs? I do not have an answer for this, but now you can check out a bunch of photos I’ve taken throughout the year for the campus newspaper. Obviously, the editors don’t use all of the pictures I give them, so think of this as a behind-the-scenes tour. I failed to read the fine print and uploaded a bunch of recent pictures and hit my monthly limit within one download. Next month, look out for a variety of graphic design projects and photos that I took outside of news assignments. I also joined FriendFeed…so subscribe to that if that’s what you’re in to.

Finally, I’m doing everything I can to avoid Swine Flu (the illness and the conversation – still trending on Twitter). I suggest you do the same. Also, note my latest addition to the blog – a Twitter widget that lets you know my last five tweets. This probably is not as exciting to you as it is to me, but I’d love to chat with you on Twitter.

Does your agency have an interactive/integrated marketing unit? Does that unit need some help? Shoot me a tweet or an email if you or anybody you know answered yes to these questions because, while I’ve had some conversations about my plans starting in May, I still have not nailed down any plans. Graduation is near and I wouldn’t call what I have “senioritis” because it is simply excitement to start doing more interesting things and start helping out the real world.

Everybody has a bad review online. If you can’t find a good review, it is time to look at your product.

This seems obvious, but to me, this statement perfectly describes the role social media is playing in the business world. Consider the two parts of this statement: Firstly, everybody has a bad review online. That is a little pessimistic (or realistic?), but you must realize this before engaging in social media. Secondly, an abundance of bad reviews indicates an issue with your offer. Without agreeing to this statement, your brand will not survive.

The social media movement is weeding out the brands that are not willing to change. But how do you know when you should change?

The idea of social media is to engage in conversation. I believe the role of brands in social media should be to ask questions. Traditionally, marketing has meant providing a message – take it or leave it, this is what we want you to know. Social media marketing does not adhere to this traditional view. The social part indicates that brands do not hold all of the answers.

Begin by asking how can we help? It has been proven many times in the short history of social media that you cannot attack an individual with an issue and you cannot ignore an issue. By asking how you can help, your brand becomes a fallible entity that is willing to admit an accurate sense of reality including imperfections and limitations as well as achievements. Basically, give your brand humility.

Among others, questions offer two helpful characteristics: monitoring and engagement. Follow trending opinions of your brand by explicitly asking for those opinions. People love to hand out opinions, so take advantage. One of the best ways to engage individuals and groups online is to ask them questions. Your users feel valued when you ask them for suggestions or information in a personal manner.

Individuals must follow this same pattern when using social media. The way to learn is to ask. Every Twitter usage guide says “add value”. None of those guides say add value by having all of the answers. Questions are often as valuable as the answers that come of them. I am often asked questions I simply do not know the answer to until I take a minute to consider them. These types of answers help me as much as they help the person that asked (in fact, that is where this post came from).

In social media, nobody has all of the answers (except all of the “experts”…). Answer the questions asked of you, but be sure to ask the important questions of your own.

The reason I leave a question in the title here is because I really don’t know. I had dinner with a former boss this weekend and after a long discussion about social media (because he did not know too much and wanted to learn), he posed a question about social media’s ability to draw NEW customers. It is very obvious that SM can build loyalty and survey the needs and feelings of existing customers, and evaluate trends, but is it bringing in unique customers? Should it?

My initial reaction was that SM does bring in new customers and it should…but then I thought about it.

Take Twitter for example – You follow the accounts you are interested in. If you do not know or already dislike a product, you will not follow their account. Therefore, you are not a likely candidate to be a new customer. Yes, customers will engage with brands they like, but will new people engage?

These comments get me leaning toward SM as a branch of PR. Create impressions, gain coverage, get your product out.* Kraft/DiGiorno (with the help of Weber Shandwick) has illustrated this idea. Their recent announcement about delivering pizzas to tweet-ups has gained a lot of attention. I consider the campaign PR, but it has generated social media buzz. So maybe the campaign is PR, and what they do with it next to gain new customers will be the responsibility of SM. Hopefully I will get the chance to ask Weber how they have viewed the campaign later this week.

Perhaps SM is an “other” that cannot exist without the family to which it is associated. This implies that SM needs its own specialists within agencies that have an understanding of Marketing and PR. I know a few of you are just as thankful for that comment as I am.

I apologize for the lack of answers here, I’m looking for your opinion. Where are you getting your budget from? Marketing? PR? Other? Will their soon be an SM budget for companies? Does your SM bring in unique customers? Is that even the goal?

* Understandably simplified. Sorry PR people.

4. What can you say in 140 characters? That’s the Twitter limit, and that pretty much means any tweet will be personal. A business tweet would necessarily have to be longer than that to be of any use, so what’s the use?

3. It requires too much time: When you tweet, or follow someone’s tweets, that means you are not doing something else.

• Twitter takes time to learn, and to learn how to make it work

2. It offers just too much information: Do people really want to know what you are doing at 3:47 tomorrow afternoon, what you are thinking, who you are meeting?

– Since when did the rules of business change to dictate that your customers have to be so incredibly engaged in your business?

These are some exerpts from a USA Today article in a column called “Ask An Expert”. The expert in this case is Steve Strauss.

Do you agree? Is Twitter a passing fad on which businesses are wasting time right now? Nope. Notice the obvious sign that he simply doesn’t get the point of Twitter when he basically claims that nobody cares what your business is doing at a certain point in time. That might be true, but maybe you should get out of the game if you don’t know how to play. The companies that are succeeding on Twitter understand that it is a tool to be used for much more than answering what you are doing. This expert needs to pay attention to the conversation a bit more.

Twitter takes time to learn? Agreed (it takes a couple minutes out of your horrendously busy schedule*), but any business that has this issue, call me. If you don’t believe I can handle it, I know some great agencies that would be happy to do it for you so you don’t have to spend all of that time to figure out how to use it. Remember, Shaq and Miley make it work.

What can you say in 140 characters? If you have something to say that takes more than 140 characters…your customers don’t want to hear it. The best part about Twitter is that people and companies are forced to get to the point fast. Messages must be stripped down to the core. Some tweets will be personal, others will be more professional, but that’s the goal. People buy from *people* they like and trust.

No rules dictate that your customers must be engaged…but good luck to those of you following the model that does not engage customers. Those companies will soon have plenty of time to learn how to use Twitter correctly.

* Disclaimer: It does take a bit of time to figure out how to use Twitter strategically. I think it is worth it. If you really don’t have time, there are a lot of people doing it pretty well that would be happy to help.

Raise your hand if you want to own Twitter. Now that you only have one hand free, you are going to need to offer something neither Facebook nor Google has (including more than a quarter million dollars in cash apparently). Based on Biz Stone’s recent post about negotiations with Google, I am going to assume Twitter won’t be getting acquired any time soon.

Twitter, Google, and Facebook each offer unique value, but obviously they are linked whether they (or we) like it or not. Until recently, Facebook was the news-maker and Google was the understood powerhouse of the Internet. Google is still the undeniable heavyweight champion of the world…but is there a contender? And can Facebook only make news these days if it attempts to buy Twitter?

We already know why Facebook is Scared of Twitter (Basically, Facebook is afraid that Twitter has a better community building mechanism, and businesses and celebrities are able to connect with customers/fans better). Should Google be scared as well? It has been no secret that a major chunk of Twitter’s value can be found in the search abilities. Why else would Twitter jump all over Summize (well, formerly Summize – search.twitter.com* now)? The question is not whether real time search is useful, but whether real time search competes with Google search.

TechCrunch posted this week that “[Twitter] holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn’t even have a horse in the game.” Apparently Google thinks real time search is a threat, but they are confident that both can not only survive, but are necessary. I agree.

So, Twitter is now valuable for community building and real time search. Which is more important to Twitter and the market? I appreciate that Twitter has hardly even flinched at the mention of a buy out because I want them to develop the product as they see fit rather than primarily influenced by search or community driven goals.

Twitter has pitted Google against Facebook. Search vs Coummunity. Until further notice, Twitter, the middle man, is winning this three-way battle. I believe the Twitter community could survive without search, but the search function of Twitter could not survive without a strong community. On the other hand, searching Twitter allows the community to grow and be useful for business…

What do you think? What is Twitter’s main purpose or value? Will Twitter sell out? Would the community’s worth slowly diminish without an effective search platform?

*If you haven’t heard of, seen, or been chosen to try the new interface Twitter is testing, you are missing out. While it is much more enjoyable to look at, one of the best parts is a search box in the sidebar and a list of trending topics directly below that. Miss out no more (view it here)!